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Help - System Crashes !

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Posted 29 June 2003 - 05:00 PM

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I think sensor one goes to Winbond 1 diode, and sensor 2 goes to Winbond 2 diode. Just guessing, but you should be able to figure it out through trial and error. The lower temp reading will be your MB temp, and the higher your CPU temp.

This is the relative speed that the memory is running at, and is just theoretical bandwidth.

When you first boot your computer your CPU will be cool, you really need to run it at 100% utilization for a while to see where it's at. That's what I think your system is possibly doing. When the CPU is running wide open, it's getting too hot and causing the system to freeze. MBM5 can tell you the CPU temp as your running an app so that you can identify if this is the cause.

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Posted 29 June 2003 - 09:14 PM

DrD

Posted 30 June 2003 - 10:19 AM

DrD

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You know I was talking to a friend at work today, and he started asking me
about my power supply. It happens to be a fairly generic (250W?) supply that
I had put in the system 2-3 years ago. Is it possible that this kind of instability
could be a power supply problem ? I always thought power supply problems
would mean it powers up/or it doesn't, or maybe you have a lot of heat. But I
didn't think that a system freeze could be caused by that. Yet many people on
AMD and Anantech forum pages say the power supply is one thing to check.
Your thoughts ?

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Posted 30 June 2003 - 10:45 AM

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A 250 watt generic power supply is probably too small for your system, especially when overclocking. However, it's been my experience that an under powered, power supply will cause random reboots, not lockups. Of course, anything is possible. There's a wide variation in power supplies, I'd rather have a quality 250W, than a cheapo 400W.

It is unusual that even though your motherboard doesn't appear to support the Barton core that it does boot up. However, you should be able to boot your system at 166 MHz FSB, and can't. A power supply could cause this, but you probably wouldn't have to reset the BIOS if it was the power supply preventing the system from booting.

Going back to your original problem of random lockups, I highly doubt that this was caused by your power supply, still most likely an overheating problem or the fact that this MB doesn't support the Barton.

It sure wouldn't hurt to upgrade your power supply, but I'd probably start with the motherboard.

DrD

Posted 30 June 2003 - 02:09 PM

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You know it's interesting. I've found some posts at www.amdmb.com ofpeople who seem to be running the 2500+ Barton with the Epox 8K9A2+board. There is a very intersting post where a guy said he had to raise hisVdimm voltage to 2.6 and another posted he had to set the core to 1.8V.

I'm definitely gonna play with this a little before I send stuff back. I've gottill Wednesday before I go out of town so I figure it gives me a little time.I'd like to have the MB (or culprit hardware) on its way and back while I'mgone on holiday next week. I'm learning a lot by reading the posts here.Here's what one guy posted about the board:

affebaffeJunior Member

Registered: Jun 2003Location: Posts: 4

Thanks

This is just the kind of information I'm looking for.

It seems like the 8k9a2+ comes in in two flavours. One that works perfect and one that drives people crazy. TormentoR you seems to be a winner in the 8k9a2+ lottery. Good for you!

Have you had any issues with the mobo asides from not detecting your CPU untill you upgraded BIOS?

I had to increase VDim to 2,6 V before my Crucial RAM stick worked properly.

During my 3 days struggle to get this mobo going it once detected my CPU so far that it set the FSB automaticaly to 166.

When I got it working however I had to manualy set the FSB to 166 in BIOS.

I think the FSB set to 166 in the Bios is actually getting doubled to 333 whenthe system boots. I think I should be able to set it to this, I agree with yourstatement. I'm gonna swap power supplies, put the jumper back to 100MHzon the motherboard and try 166MHzx12, setting the Vdimm to 2.6 and Vcoreto 1.8V. Any experience setting Voltages ?

admin

Posted 30 June 2003 - 02:56 PM

I don't blame you for wanting to figure this out. I'm stubborn like that too!

Remember, there are two versions of this board from EPOX, the 8K9A2, and the 8K9A2+. I think you have the 8K9A2. The 8K9A2+ has a newer BIOS that supports the Barton see this link

If you increase your voltage, you're going to increase heating too. Also, you really shouldn't need to increase your voltage to boot at default settings, but you're not going to hurt anything by bumping the voltage a little (<.3V).

I'm a little confused by the FSB jumper on the MB. These BIOS are referred to as jumperless. Usually, you either have the choice to use a MB jumper to set FSB in the BIOS. Some boards have both, but then a jumper is changed to enable this "jumperless" setting. I didn't see any mention of this in the manual.

It sounds like your on the right track. AMDMB.com is a great site. You could also check the forums at Tom's Hardware, and [H]ardOCP.com.

I had a similar problem once trying to get an Athlon1700+ Thoroughbred to work in a SOYO Dragon SY-K7V MB. It turns out this board didn't support the Thoroughbred. Strange.

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DrD

Posted 30 June 2003 - 03:35 PM

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Ahh I didn't realize the difference - maybe I do have the 8K9A2, andnot the 8K9A2+ !! I didn't realize they were different. I'm a testengineer and trouble-shooter at heart. So in a way I don't mind someproblems, but in this case I'd love to just solve it and go on.

(Reading a post from AMDMB...)Well, maybe the jumper should be set to 133... does it mean 266is as high as I can go ? Doesn't the Barton support 333 ? I'm gettinga bit confused here.

I am in the process of building a computer using a Epox 8K9A2+ MB. It will have a AMD Athlon XP2600+ CPU and 512MB PC2700 memory. In setting up the MB, there is Jumper setting that says CPU Host Clock Select 1-2: 100MHz (Default) 2-3: 133MHz

I couldn't find anything on this in the user manual that came with the MB. ThereforeMy questions are: which one of the Clock selects do I go with, the default or the 133MHz? Just what is the CPU Host Clock?

DrD

Posted 30 June 2003 - 09:48 PM

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I had a bit of a scare just now. I thought I had made such an importantdiscovery, but I may have pushed things too far...

Ok, so I did 3 things. 1) I pulled out the power supply in my system, and loand behold, a 235W A-Open power supply! So that immediatelybecame the suspect hardware to be changed. I pulled a 300W supply fromanother PC that I have in my home network. 2) At the same time I swappedan ATI Radeon 9500 Pro (high performance) vid card for the ATI 9000 that wasin there before. And lastly 3) I made sure my MB jumper was set to 133Mhz,and not to 100Mhz. The result looked great - at first.

Jumping into Bios I went straight for the target - I set the FSB to 166 and themultiplier to 11X, giving me a 1.8Gig clock. And it came up! So I decided tojump up to a fairly high muliplier. 166X15 for a 2.5Gig clock, no luck here. Thebootup screen gave me an error message. The CPU clock ratio resulted in afailure, and it forced me back to Bios GUI. So I tried 166X14(2.3GHz) and then166X13(2.16GHz). The results were:166X 15 =2.5GHz Bios Failed - forces change166X 14 =2.3GHz Succeeds, but my Win2k crashes to aBlue Fatal Exception screen every time166X 13 =2.16GHz Succeeds and Win2k loads ok but there isnoticible off and on freezing at the desktopAt this point, I'm very happy that I'm up and running over the 2GHz mark, andI decide to try out a graphics intensive game. Here's where the scare came. Thegame locked shortly after going in. No CTRL-ALT-DLT available so go to a hardreset. No hard reset. Notice the hard drive LED is on, not moving. Power buttonis useless also. Uh oh. Pull the power cable. Re-insert the power cable. No signalto the monitor. Yipes. Repeat, no signal. Reset the CMOS with jumper, applypower, no signal to the monitor. (Beads of sweat forming) Wait fewmin, keep trying, finally a signal to the monitor. (Thanks the lord his new ATIGraphics card is not fried). Bios comes up showing a CPU temp of 1 degree andreports several errors. I think they were: Display switch is not set properly! andCMOS battery failed! Maybe one other can't remember. Then back into Biosand set the FSB and multiplier to 166X 11 for 1.8GHz. Win2k loads ok and moreor less back to normal , but you know, even while writing this long postI'm still seeing the occasional delayed response between keystrokes and thedisplay of characters on the screen. I'm gonna go into Star Wars and AC2 sincethey're the real tests of the system performance. I'll see if things are still thesame using the new supply and video card. But I'm a little nervous to play withhigh clock settings for the moment. I'm also now wondering if I may need toreinstall my Win2k after putting all this new hardware in. I hate to do it since Ihave it all the way I like it, but I've had several people say I should. So maybetomorrow at lunch I'll just do it and get it over with to eliminate that variable. What do you think? Can Win2k remember old hardware and thus, need to bere-tuned to the new faster CPU and motherboard/memory ?

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Posted 01 July 2003 - 10:30 AM

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Welcome to the wonderful world of overclocking!

What you describe is very typical when trying to find your maximum overclock speed. You really should go a lot slower though, a couple Mhz at a time. Once you've found the lockup point, back off a few and start testing for stability by running benchmarks like 3DMark 2001 or Prime95

When a system locks up like you describe it's often the memory that's responsible, you could try backing off the memory timings to see if you can go higher. When the CPU reaches maximum overclock it usually causes random reboots. When the CPU overheats, it will also cause lockups.

I'm also now wondering if I may need to reinstall my Win2k after putting all this new hardware in.

Yes, you HAVE to reinstall the OS anytime you change a system motherboard. This was made much easier in WindowsXP with the addition of a repair feature on the boot CD. Unfortunately, there's no such option with Windows 2000. Your best option is to back up your important data, reformat and reinstall your OS and programs, sorry.